Only 7 years? We're in Healthcare. Seven is usually the minimum.
If you're talking Minors, then it is 18+7= 25 years. "Digital Mammography" &
"Research-related" electronic medical records are FOREVER. There are lots of
numbers on time-retention floating around out there - it just depends on the
"governing authority". We haven't completed our Retention Policy, so we have
tapes from various Operating Systems and Applications from the 1990's.
Regards,
Troy Barnhart, Sr. Systems Programmer
tbarnhart AT rcrh DOT org
Regional Health, Inc.
353 Fairmont Boulevard
Rapid City, South Dakota 57701
PH: 605-716-8352 / FAX: 605-716-8302
-----Original Message-----
From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU] On Behalf Of
Shawn Drew
Sent: Tuesday, August 04, 2009 11:15 AM
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Subject: [ADSM-L] Another perspective on ridiculous retention
"Do I understand you to say you have to keep your NDMP backups around for
7 years? The tape media isn't even meant to last for 7 years. Do you
have customers that actually think they will need 7 year old copies of you
NAS data? That's a tough requirement."
I thought I'd change this to a new topic. I hear this type of comment
alot on backup forums. From an engineering perspective, it completely
makes sense. It also makes sense that people in backup forums think like
engineers!
Just another perspective. When I started with TSM, I was working for a
software development company named "Tivoli" who obviously cared about
their backup data. The mantra of the backup guys was "Restores are more
important than backups!" I.E. do periodic test restores, and if a
restore request comes in and conflicts with a backup. cancel the backup
in favor of the restore.
Several years later, I start working for a bank. After working here for a
few years, I realize the mantra is now the reverse: "Backups are more
important than restores". Meaning. the main reason we perform backups
and retain them for 7 years, is so we can show an auditor our settings and
say we've done it.
We very rarely have to restore anything that old, but we very often have
to show records of these backups.
One last note, I have been involved in legal discovery projects where we
actually did have to restore 7 year old data off of old DLT IV tapes. We
found tapes with dried up BBQ sauce on them and all sorts of damage.
Luckily, between the multiple storage pools we were able to rebuild all
the data. The DLTs never actually failed due to age (only by a
tomato-based attack!)
Regards,
Shawn
________________________________________________
Shawn Drew
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